Month: December 2025

Senna has given us back the passion for a Formula 1 that no longer exists. And its sound is key to understanding its success

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March 1, 1981. Brands Hatch, United Kingdom. He had fought for two karting world championships but was still a complete unknown to the general public. Not even in England, where the passion for motorsport is several steps ahead of other European countries, were they aware of what they were seeing. Brazilian with curly hair. The face of a child on the body of a 21-year-old boy. The arrogant look of someone who knows he is superior. And it is superior. That day was fifth at the controls of his Van Diemen. Two weeks were enough for me to get his first victory. With the circuit flooded, Ayrton Senna da Silva asked his team to put as much pressure as possible in their tires. They say that no one on the team believed in that decision but as a pilot who paid to have a guaranteed seat, the mechanics followed orders. The rest is history. The Brazilian driver began to string victories. Six races held that year in the Formula Ford 1600 with four victories. 12 victories out of 19 rounds in which he took the exit. At the end of that same year, Ayrton Senna fulfilled his family commitment and promise to Lilian de Vasconcelos Souza, then girlfriend and then briefly wife of the man considered the most talented Formula 1 driver in history. Senna returned to his country to run the family business. But he had already experienced what it was like to win. He had already experienced what it was like to be the best. And he came back to win it all. They exist, they are somewhere More than 40 years after that Brands Hatch race, Netflix released Senna. “While we were still searching, we recorded a Formula Ford in Sweden, an FF 1600,” The speaker is Gabriel Gutiérrezsound designer of the six-episode series in which the pilot’s life is recreated working with, among other tools, Dolby Atmos. Senna talks about the human side of the driver, his private life and his path to becoming a triple world champion. But if something attracts an amateur, it is the montage of the images, the recreations aboard legendary single-seaters. Recreations that would be nothing without their sound. “I received a call from a post-production supervisor from Brazil, Gabriel Queiroz, who told me about a new project by Vicente Amorim, with whom I had already worked on Holy. From the beginning, we started looking for cars worldwide and how to get models from that era to go out and record them,” explains Gutiérrez about how Senna was built. “The filming was going to be done with replicas of the cars that were custom-built models, fantastic, with enormous precision, but their engines were not Formula 1 racing ones,” Gutiérrez clarifies. Ayrton Senna in the Formula Ford 1600 in 1981 And there begins the challenge: to be able to record the most iconic models driven and against which Ayrton Senna competed throughout the decade of the 80s and early 90s. “Many people told us that we were crazy, that we were never going to achieve it, that those cars were dismantled and that they do not exist.” But boy do they exist. Whoever has ever gone to see a Formula 1 race, there is something that they do not forget: the sound. The current V6 hybrids have nothing to do with the brutal howl of the V10s of the late 90s and early 2000s that Senna himself would not see. What he did have in his hands were cars from a time that will not return. Between his debut in Formula 1 in 1984 and the fateful May 1, 1994 when he lost his life in the Tamburello curve of the Imola circuit (San Marino), the turbo V8 and the naturally aspirated V10 and V12 paraded through Formula 1, the latter with a brutal sound, hoarser than the return of the V10 from 1995 onwards. Pure sounds, without a trace of electrification, that danced inside the cabin to the metallic tapping of the gearbox lever. From stomping on the clutch to downshift, playing with the accelerator to synchronize the revolutions of an engine that was going above 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 rpm. The engine backfired before taking the first chicane at Monza where the Ferraris of Berger and Alboreto watched in shock as Ayrton Senna abandoned the car after Jean-Louis Schlesser crashed and got the only victory they would scratch to the McLarens throughout 1988. The hit of the accelerator at the start and the howl with each gear change before reaching the Parabolica and heading down the finish line. The no less powerful cry of the typhosi in the stands when they saw that they were returning to the top of the podium in Monza when just three laps before they had seen it impossible. They were years of pure driving, of senses. By sight, smell, touch… and hearing. For the protagonists and those who admired them. For those who saw a Brazilian debutant swims between the rails in Monaco in 1984jeopardizing the victory of an already renowned Alain Prost who managed to stop the race before its end, distributing half of the points in a decision that would end up costing him the World Championship at the end of the year in favor of Niki Lauda. Ayrton Senna aboard the Lotus 97T “We were able to record Ayrton Senna’s original Toleman from 1984 and the original Lotus, the 97T model at the Lotus Classic Track in Oxford, which was a fantastic recording. The Toleman was positioned as the new leading car for us, the favorite,” explains Gutiérrez. By then, they had already obtained a good handful of the cars that marked an era. As? Moving through the mist. Senna’s sound designer explains that his first idea was to talk to Frank Cruz, who held that same position in Rush by Ron Howard, a film about the duel between Niki Lauda and James Hunt in the 1976 World Championship. The film … Read more

It turns out that a longevity expert has said something that makes sense. And the reason is the juices

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Peter Diamandis has returned. The famous doctor and engineer specializing in longevity has once again made simple dietary advice viral: “if you like oranges, eat them whole and not in juice.” And, to the surprise of all of us who closely follow the worldit’s a good idea. Beyond the joke, longevity is becoming serious. Very serious indeed. Since an open microphone confirmed to us in September that longevity is becoming a crucial issue for oligarchs of the present, it is impossible not to look at this community of researchers, influencers and entrepreneurs in a “different way”. However, the reality is obvious: most advice on how to live longer is a mix of cherry picking, scientific sensationalism and common sense. Ultimately, to the extent that society is increasingly obsessed with living longerthe ‘market’ for these types of ideas is growing (for better and worse). And Diamandis is a good example. As They explained in El Confidencialthis entrepreneur and researcher has a very long list of dietary ideas: from withdrawing dairy products due to the body’s inflammatory response to casein to avoiding red meat due to its saturated fats (basing his diet almost exclusively on vegetables and whole foods). As we saw a few days ago with other well-meaning advicethese kinds of ideas make some sense, yes. However, every heuristic has two sides: it illuminates a certain part of reality and helps us manage it more easily. But it hides other parts and makes it seriously difficult to be aware of them. But, let’s get to the juices. Because that is the latest advice that has been vitalized is precisely that: that the debate has never been “yes fruit” or “no fruit.” ¡Of course you have to consume fruit! The debate is how we consume it and in juice it is, possibly, the worst way. By squeezing the pieces of fruit, we not only reduce the fiber but we end up consuming something completely different: satiety is worse and sugar absorption is improved. When we talk about fruit being good, what we are saying is that we need the fiber it contains for its metabolic and satiety effects. Oh really? So much so that organizations like the AESAN they insist repeatedly that juice does not replace whole fruit. And yes, I know that for many it is a commonplace (and something very well known), but it never hurts to repeat it: the consumption of rooting fruit has fallen 14% in recent years. We already know that it is good advice, but also worse for longevity. Here, the truth is that the evidence is less clear. Above all, because it is never enough to ‘stop recommending something’, we must go further and put better options on the table. And yes, water is always an option. But unfortunately, it is not always a substitute for the social consumption of juices. Image | Zlatko Duric In Xataka | One of the leading experts on aging has just explained what he himself does to live longer. It makes sense

A Harry Potter fan fiction was so successful that it changed the names of its protagonists. And thanks to this he earned 3 million dollars

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A Harry Potter fanfic has just become one of the most successful publishing releases of the year. ‘Alchemised‘, SenLinYu’s debut novel, sold 300,000 copies during its first week in bookstores and reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list. But the real impact came days before its publication, when Legendary Entertainment paid more than $3 million for the film rights, setting a record for a debut novel. How it was done. The story behind the book is as notable as its figures: ‘Alchemised’ was originally titled ‘Manacled’, and was a fanfiction that mixed the universe of harry potter with ‘The Handmaid’s Tale‘ by Margaret Atwood, focusing on the relationship between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. Over 18 months, SenLinYu transformed his viral story (which racked up millions of reads on the fanfictions Archive of Our Own) in a completely original work, eliminating all traces of intellectual property of JK Rowling and Atwood of the text, but trying to preserve the core of the narrative. The result: Favorite Debut Novel of 2025 at the Goodreads Choice Awards. What is it about? Alchemised follows Helena Marino, an alchemist and healer who awakens after 14 months as a prisoner of war of the necromancers, the victorious side in a devastating civil war. Helena discovers that her mind has been magically altered, erasing crucial memories from a part of her life she doesn’t even remember owning. The book has a violent and dark approach, and that is why SenLinYu rejects the “romance” label despite the love component: “I didn’t write this book with the idea that it would be seen as aspirational.”he states. The author’s past. The appeal of the book lies precisely in that uncompromising darkness. SenLinYu, of Japanese descent, injects into her fantasy elements based on the real horrors of war (her maternal grandmother was in American concentration camps during World War II) and has sought to recover ignored historical perspectives, particularly the experiences of Soviet women on the Eastern Front. That combination of epic fantasy and anti-war criticism has connected with readers who seek more mature and disturbing narratives than those usual in the genre. The paradigmatic case. The path of fanfiction The publishing phenomenon has an inescapable antecedent: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’. In 2009, EL James began publishing chapters of ‘Master of the Universe’ on Fanfiction.netreimagining the relationship between Edward Cullen and Bella Swan from ‘Twilight’, without vampires but with a domineering billionaire. Reader reaction was so positive that James self-published the story in 2011 after removing explicit references to Stephenie Meyer’s saga and renaming the protagonists Christian Gray and Anastasia Steele. The leap came in March 2012, when Random House acquired the rights of the novel in a seven-figure contract. The result was more than 150 million copies sold globally and a film trilogy that grossed $1.3 billion at the global box office. Even then Jennifer Bergstrom, executive at Simon & Schuster, declared that “the fanfiction It has definitely become part of what we publish. This is changing the industry at a time when traditional publishing needs it most.” For the first time, major publishers were publicly acknowledging that online communities of amateur writers were a legitimate talent pool. Other successes. The success of ‘Fifty Shades’ was not an isolated case. Anna Todd wrote a story about One Direction’s Harry Styles on Wattpad in 2013, publishing it in serial format under the title ‘After’. The story accumulated more than 1,000 million readings on the platform before Simon & Schuster offered him a contract with which sold more than 10 million copies and generated five movies. More recently, Ali Hazelwood transformed her fanfiction of Star Wars centered on Rey and Kylo Ren in ‘The Love Hypothesis’, which It will soon be adapted to film. The journey here. This transformation of fanfiction into a bestseller would not have been possible without the digital ecosystem that supports it. Archive of Our Own It houses more than 13 million works and has become the most important archive of transformative writing. ‘Manacled’ by SenLinYu It was the second most read story in the entire history of the web when it was removed in January 2025, having accumulated more than 10 million views and 84,000 kudos (the equivalent of “likes”). This phenomenon has forced the traditional publishing industry to rethink its methods of attracting talent. Literary agents and editors now systematically scour Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, and Fanfiction.net, identifying high-impact stories before offering contracts. Removing references to other people’s intellectual property is now a standardized process, and thanks to this, trends such as videos on ‘Manacled’ accumulated millions of views years before ‘Alchemised’ hit bookstores. A whole tide of public before the official publication of the book. In Xataka | JK Rowling against fandom: How the Harry Potter universe lost its magic

keep driving on the left

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The one in Madrid is one of the most interesting subways in Europe and it is not even due to the work of coverage of your ticket vending machines not even because I’m going to remove drivers from L6. Nor for their pushersits controversial solution to minimize overcrowding. Since Alfonso At 294 kilometers long and with 302 stations, it is the ninth largest in the world. And in those more than 300 stations it hides historical particularities, such as the ghost station of Chamberí, converted into an air raid shelter during the Spanish Civil War and which remains intact and open to the public in the Platform 0. It’s not the only thing that hasn’t changed: The subway continues to circulate on the left. As a curiosity, some subway escalators are also arranged in that direction. A fairly common question if you are used to taking the metro in other cities, such as Barcelona or Paris, is the direction of the system’s circulation: in Madrid, the metro runs on the left, as does the London metro. That nod to Britishness is not accidental. When the Spanish civil engineers Miguel Otamendi, Carlos Mendoza and Antonio González Echarte were in charge of the design of the Madrid Metro, They were inspired by the London Undergroundadopting The Tube’s signaling and circulation standards. The metro network came before the highway code And it makes sense: at that time London was the world benchmark for suburban railways and, furthermore, there was no state traffic regulation that required driving on the right. Thus, for example in Madrid people drove on the left while in Barcelona they drove on the right. A side of the mayor of Madrid in 1924 officially decreed that they would drive on the right. However, a decade later the first highway code state. It doesn’t matter: the Madrid Metro had already been operational for years. The one of why in the UK we drive on the left It is an issue that has a lot of crumbs, but in short the historical reasons are two: war and comfort. Assuming that most people are right-handed, driving on the left was the best in case of having to fight an attacker that you came across head-on. You had a better angle of maneuver and your right hand was between you and the enemy. On the other hand, mounting and dismounting from a horse is also easier if you are right-handed and also safer, lowering yourself into the ditch. Likewise, when driving, accidental whipping of pedestrians was also avoided. Was Napoleon who changed this dynamic in the rest of Europe. Geographically and culturally, it would be logical to think that the Madrid Metro would have changed its orientation to align itself with the bulk of the old continent and current standards, but it did not happen. In addition, Madrid’s light metro lines do circulate on the right following the modern road system. Despite the adoption of the state traffic code that required driving on the left, the Madrid metro never changed direction. The Madrid Metro Network was and is independent of the state’s railway network, so in the 1930s they determined that it would continue to circulate on the left to avoid exorbitant cost which would mean in infrastructure and logistics the change of the installed signage, the reversal of the direction of travel of the trains and the pointers on the tracks and even how some stations were configured. In Xataka | Madrid wants to convert its least used Metro line into the “Gran Diagonal”. A 1,000 million project without a clear end In Xataka | Faced with daily collapses, the Madrid Metro could increase frequencies or put in “pushers.” He has chosen the second Cover | Photo of Martti Salmi in Unsplash

Working in a nuclear power plant is not the best way to avoid cancer. Now it turns out that its waste also serves to cure it

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If there is a terrifying and mainstream disease, it is cancer: after all, according to the WHOone in five people will develop it at some point in their life. Although in some cases the risk factors vary depending on the type of cancer, working in a nuclear power plant poses some riskas long as there is greater exposure to ionizing radiation, even if there are no accidents or more intense exposure through maintenance work. Paradoxically, the activity of nuclear power plants, which can cause cancer, also serves to generate the basis of the medicine to cure it. And we are not talking about a potentially distant study, but rather something that can already be materialized. In fact, the United Kingdom has already taken a step forward to transform some of its radioactive waste into anti-cancer medication. The world’s first lead-212 radiopharmaceutical ecosystem. Because in the UK they have closed an agreement between the public body Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the biotechnology company Bicycle Therapeutics for which the latter will have 400 tons of reprocessed uranium to extract the valuable (for the medical industry) lead – 212 for 15 years. Behind Bicycle is Sir Greg Winter, co-founder of the company and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018. This will provide them with the infrastructure to create the world’s first end-to-end lead-212 radiopharmaceutical ecosystem, from discovery to commercial supply. So explains it Mike Hannay, Chief Product and Supply Chain Officer at Bicycle Therapeutics. The benefits of lead – 212. Lead – 212 is an isotope used in therapeutic contexts thanks to its particular decay properties, so that it emits both alpha and beta particles. While the former provide high-energy, short-range cytotoxicity, the latter have a more extended range, targeting micro-metastasis. In a simplified way, this medically applicable isotope is essential for precision treatments against tumors resistant to other therapies. Thus, it carries radiation and acts directly on cancer cells to destroy tumors, minimizing the damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. This type of technique offers promising results in prostate cancers and neuroendocrine tumors of organs such as the intestine or pancreas. Extracting lead-212 is an arduous task. Converting the waste from nuclear power plants into cancer treatments seems like a fantastic idea for two reasons: because of the cure for cancer itself and the problem of dealing with radioactive waste, one of the great challenges faced by these energy industries, which have also explored other avenues such as take advantage of the remaining energy. But getting here has not been easy: the extraction process of this isotope has been carried out by the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory (UKNNL) with a complex chemical process that requires the isolation of scandalously small quantities of the precursor material from the used nuclear fuel. Thus, first the Thorium-228 is extracted from the reprocessed uranium to later process it into Radium-224. It is then loaded into a lead-212 generator that has been custom-made for Bicycle Therapeutics’ needs by US company SpectronRx. This is a continuous regeneration, producing enough lead-212 to deliver tens of thousands of doses of precision therapy per year. The laboratory explains that the critical part is in the beginning: “The initial precursor material extracted is comparable to finding a single drop of water in an Olympic swimming pool.” From that minute amount, an even smaller fraction of lead-212 is separated. First discover the universe, then cure cancer. In addition to this unexpected use of nuclear power plant waste, in recent weeks a group of researchers from the University of York have evidenced in a study that the intense radiation captured in the beam absorbers of particle accelerators could be reused to produce materials used in cancer therapies. Those particle accelerators They are used, among other things, in experiments to discover the matter of which the universe is composed. In Xataka | The rarest element on Earth aims to cure cancer. And Europe is already accelerating its production In Xataka | We have been believing that bacteria are a weapon against tumors for 150 years. And finally we have discovered how Cover | Jakub Zerdzicki and Ivan S

the Deliplus fever and imitations of luxury cosmetics

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It all starts with that feeling of satisfaction and triumph when you leave the Mercadona. You haven’t been left behind and you have found that viral product that everyone on TikTok is talking about at a more than affordable price. A sensation that, when it comes to Mercadona and the year 2025, we can associate with launches starring the star ingredient and omnipresent, the pistachio, but no: in many cases the viral products of this supermarket have nothing to do with food. The devotion it provokes in perfumery and perfumery fans is nothing new. skincare, DeliplusMercadona’s cosmetics brand. Because of him, when we cross the exit door with our full bag, we realize that we have not only fallen into the trap of the viral product but also of the microspending. This is how a generation spends For those who are not familiar with the term microspendingwe are talking about that phenomenon that mostly affects generation Z and that consists of compulsively making small expenses, usually motivated by trends, the need for immediate reward or social networks. Due to their low cost, they seem like insignificant expenses, but in reality, when repeated frequently, they end up representing a considerable expense that silently depletes the current account. A subscription to Netflix, a video game on sale on Steam or the new viral lipstick from Mercadona are the only whims that many young people can afford. By not having enough capital to face large investments like a home or a car, its members choose to allocate their money to expenses more affordableimmediate and ephemeral. This increasingly restrictive economic context only allows us to search for immediate gratification, whether through a weekend getaway or with the Deliplus news section. Therefore, in terms of whims, our Mercadona basket is almost devoid of food but full of highlighters, creams or perfumes that are the new sensation. @mcarmenpadillaseq Mercadona has released a serum with a b0tox effect, and I have done a marathon to analyze it for you 🕵🏻‍♀️ #market #skincare #wrinkles #gallolegs #antiaging ♬ original sound – MCarmen Padilla Sequera Products that resemble in texture, packaging or effect to those high end cosmetics that are out of our budget like Lancôme, Dior, Fenty Beauty or Kayali. Actually, we rarely talk about viral formulas that respond to something unprecedented, but rather that satisfy our wish for the dupesoffering us those similar versions to the high range but eliminating that high price associated with brands from another category. Without going any further, in recent months Deliplus has launched a new serum for six euros in the form of a syringe but without a needle, the ‘Botox Like Serum’, which promises to help with wrinkles and expression lines to achieve that “Botox effect”. With its active ingredients, in addition to controlling these folds in certain areas, it seeks to avoid matte skin and thus also achieve that luminous skin. glass skin that is so fashionable. This combination of innovation, trend and low price It has made the product attract the attention of the consumer, in addition to creating a buzz effect on social networks; especially when compared to his Shiseido dupewhich promises similar effects fighting the signs of skin aging but with a price of around 250 euros. At first glance, everything seems perfect: the product has the approval of several specialists in cosmetics that highlight their effectiveness in those problem areas of the face, at the same time you save money and obtain many of the benefits that the product on which it is inspired promises. It seems that we would have no reason to doubt its success and virality. The enormous business of skincare The trick comes when we go in to buy that product that catches our attention, but in the end we end up with many others from the Deliplus line. Because, of course, how can I not take it if it’s so cheap? We may save 30 euros on a lipstick but we end up adding the highlighter, blush and bronzer that go to game. It’s true, they’re only around five euros each, but as long as you add up…Also, as if that weren’t enough, you walk down the hallway and that perfume dupe Armani that is trendy and that you wanted to try so much. Result: the perfect definition of microspending. The global cosmetics market continues to grow and is in full boom. There is increasing interest (especially in young population) for him skincareprevention and the search for certain active ingredients that benefit our skin such as retinol wave niacinamide. Specifically in Spain and Portugal, the perfumery and cosmetics sector exceeded 8.1 billion euros in sales in 2024 and it is expected that in 2025 it will end with a 5% additional growth. Both social networks and digital commerce play a fundamental role in promoting this habit of microspending; 66% of customers discover brands on social networks through recommendations from celebrities and influencers, and also 8 out of 10 consumers They claim to buy products after having seen them on social networks. “They have completely reshaped the beauty industry, changing the way consumers discover products and engage with brands. Platforms have democratized information, allowing anyone to share their experiences with a global audience. A positive review can spark curiosity and generate widespread interest, allowing trends to emerge quickly. Word of mouth has never been more influential” Nicola Kilner, co-founder of The Ordinary. Outside our borders, the dupes phenomenon also has great actors. ELF is one of the most prominent and its CEO, Tarang Amin, told in an interview with Washington Post one of the keys to its success. According to him, during a TikTok live, several users insisted on their interest in a product from his brand similar to the tanning drops by Drunk Elephant. He immediately asked his product division and it didn’t take long for them to go to market. Of course, for a third of the original price. Of course, China has also entered the equation. Shein, which … Read more

We are so hooked on smartphones that Gen Z has found its own “detox”: sending letters again

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I remember perfectly the first letter I wrote. My best friend had moved to a town in Ciudad Real and the distance, back then, was measured in the time our parents allowed us to use the telephone line. We couldn’t spend hours on the phone, so we decided to tell each other our lives by email. Every week, a letter. That exchange of envelopes lasted as long as it took us to have a computer tower and internet access. Then the great migration arrived: Messenger, Fotolog, Tuenti, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp… Today we send photos to each other in real time and make video calls. If someone had told those two girls that technology would be the glue of their friendship, they wouldn’t have believed it. In the middle of 2025, history seems to be closing an unexpected circle. We live in the era of immediacy, where WhatsApp messages coexist with saturated emails that ask for mercy under the tagline ASAP (as soon as possible). The saturation is such that the phone’s storage warns every so often that there is no space, while the messages are interspersed with alerts, reminders and the white noise of a hyperconnected world. Faced with this “uncontrolled beat of the digital rush”, Generation Z has rescued the habit of being penpals or pen pals. Stamps.com Data reveal that almost 48% of this generation sends physical correspondence at least once a month, breaking the myth of the young person unable to tear themselves away from the screen. On Instagram, the hashtag #penpal already exceeds 1.3 million of posts, while TikTok becomes a catalog of calligraphy and sealing wax. It’s not about sending a text; It is a “slow ritual” where both the content and the container count. Neuropsychology explains this return with crystal clear clarity. According to psychologist Noelia Barroso, interviewed by El EspañolWhile digital notification triggers a rapid and volatile dopamine pulse, waiting for a letter activates multisensory processes that generate much more stable oxytocin peaks. The weight of the paper and its aroma link deep memories that the pixel simply ignores. This phenomenon is, in essence, a measure of mental health. The Tunheim report points out that 44% of young people have reduced their screen time out of sheer exhaustion, searching through the mail for a necessary “digital detox.” The expert Victoria López, in Hello magazinedefines it as a form of “constant presence”: a physical object that lives on a shelf and that, unlike a chat, has a mass and texture that make it indestructible against oblivion. A love of the tangible This “historical nostalgia” for times they did not live in is an emotional compass towards the authenticity that the algorithm has worn away. The impact is such that the market is transforming. Pinterest Predictions 2026 indicates that searches of “beautiful stamps” have risen 105% and that letter writing will be considered a “performative art.” However, the road is uneven. While in the United States 31% of young people trust the email for securityIn Europe we are experiencing radical contrasts. Denmark has stopped delivering letters after 400 years due to extreme digitalization, but even so, young Danes send three times more letters than the rest of the population through private companies, according to The Guardian. Even the connection with our own future has changed. Tools like FutureMe either Letter to Yourself They allow you to send messages to yourself ten years from now. It is an exercise in “realistic optimism” to connect with the present and relativize the current crises, a way of “leaving a mark.” In the end, Generation Z is not technophobic; They are simply the first to understand that technology is a means, not an end. According to sociologist Narciso Michavila in La Vanguardiathey look for the physical because hyperdigitization no longer surprises them; It is its natural state and, therefore, it lacks the value of the extraordinary. This need to touch the memory has crystallized into another practice that is sweeping networks: junk journaling. It’s not just collecting papers; is, as WeLife explainsthe art of turning recycling into a personal diary to reconnect with yourself. The New York Times collect how young enthusiasts They rescue everything from traffic tickets to museum tickets or bread wrappers for their aesthetic value. “It’s a challenge to find things you would normally throw away and use them in a fun way,” its practitioners explain. In a world consumed by screens, the junk journal forces hands to still and embrace the silence of cutting and pasting, creating physical time capsules that, unlike the cloud, do not depend on a server to exist. In a context where generative AI can write thousands of emails in seconds, human handwriting is positioned as the last bastion of the unrepeatable. The handwritten letter has ceased to be a formality and has become an object of resistance against the attention economy. Some things don’t go out of style, they just wait for us to need them again. Today, in 2025, it seems that Gen Z has found in a sealed envelope the calm that fiber optics failed to give them. Image | freepik Xataka | Harvard bought a cheap copy of the Magna Carta in 1946. They just discovered they had a treasure worth a fortune

nuclear microreactors made like Lego pieces

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The artificial intelligence revolution has an Achilles heel that is not in the code, but in the networks. In this scenario of “energy hunger”, an Austin company called Aalo Atomics has decided that the solution is not to wait for the State to build infrastructure, but to manufacture its own nuclear reactors like someone making Lego pieces. A unique structure. If decades ago the message “Hello World” marked the beginning of the computer age, today the “Aalo World” aims to mark the beginning of the Second Atomic Age. According to a company press releaseAalo Atomics has begun construction of an experimental reactor, the Aalo-X, under the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program. The ambition is such that, as reported by NucNetthe company has already shipped the first five test modules (the Aalo-0 prototype) from its factory in Austin to the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The goal is to have everything ready by July 4, 2026. The “Bring Your Own Energy” model. AI data centers have sparked a new business fever: the “bring your own energy”. Giants like Microsoft, Google or Amazon can no longer depend on an American electrical grid that, although should add 80GW of capacity per year, barely reaches 65GW due to bureaucracy and bottlenecks. This is where the star product comes in: the Aalo Pod. According to the company’s technical informationit is not an eternal “construction project”, but rather a mass-produced product. Each “Pod” will generate 50 MW and is designed to be adjacent to data centers. By not requiring external water sources for cooling – thanks to their air condensers – these plants can be located in arid or remote areas, directly feeding the servers without going through the saturated electrical grid. “Lego” engineering. The key to Aalo Atomics’ success lies in three pillars: Products, not projects. According to Matt LoszakCEO of Aalo Atomics, the historical mistake of the sector was to build each plant as a single civil work. His XMR concept (Extra Modular Reactor) allows parts to arrive on site as finished and tested blocks, ready to be connected. Sodium technology. Unlike conventional plants, sodium allows the reactor operates at atmospheric pressure. This eliminates the need for expensive, gigantic containment domes. To avoid incidents like the one at the Monju plant (Japan) in 1995, Aalo Atomics has developed double-walled steam generators and an AI-powered autonomous maintenance robot that remotely detects and seals leaks. Passive security. The design, led by Yasir Arafat (CTO of Aalo Atomics), uses a fuel that expands naturally if the temperature rises too high, stopping the reaction by physical laws, without the need for human intervention. An extensive collaboration network. Dubbed the “Aaloverse”, it has woven an ecosystem of 127 suppliers in 35 states that transcends the energy sector to integrate the current kings of silicon. Microsoft and NVIDIA not only appear as potential clients, but as technological partners for the development of a “digital super operator”. This artificial intelligence platform, supported by NVIDIA’s computational muscle and Azure tools, seeks to automate the enormous bureaucracy of nuclear permits and manage the reactor with a minimal human workforce, turning the plant into an autonomous system capable of predicting failures before they occur. For this digital vision to be translated into real energy, Aalo Atomics has resorted to the reliability of traditional heavy industry, closing alliances with giants such as Baker Hughes and Siemens for the supply of turbines and generators. This strategy, together with a historic contract with Urenco, accelerates its arrival on the market and guarantees enriched uranium for the Aalo-X reactor in 2026, breaking dependence on foreign supplies and shielding the energy sovereignty of future data centers. Towards a Second Atomic Age? Aalo Atomics faces a challenge that the industry considered impossible: going from the founding of the company to nuclear fission in less than three years. However, with $136 million in financing and the first hardware already on Idaho soil, doubt is giving way to expectation. If they manage to turn on Aalo-X in the summer of 2026, they will not only have built a reactor; They will have inaugurated a model where nuclear energy is as modular, scalable and private as the servers themselves that today try to decipher the future of humanity. The race is on and, for now, Idaho’s clock is ticking. Image | Aalo Atomics Xataka | The boom in companies developing SMR reactors is no coincidence: it is just what the military wanted

If the universe is closed, there is no room for an external observer

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In the world of theoretical physics, the different articles that are published can be dry texts, full of equations with endless integrals. However, a recent article has broken this rule. Although its content is rigorously technical, it is a small footnote that has captured the public’s imagination: a direct reference to the theological implications of his mathematical discovery. A universe without ‘outside’. To understand the reference that has been made to God, we must first understand the conclusion of the document. Harlow and his team address the quantum gravity problem in a closed universe. This, unlike the usual theoretical models that have “borders”, a closed universe It doesn’t have edges or an ‘exterior’ or anything.. In this way, the study indicates that the universe does not have an immense variety of possible states. It is a single, static and trivial state, so whatever has happened or what will happen will be contained in a single dimension. The appearance of God. This is where the phrase that has shaken the networks comes in, since they affirm that if we are in a closed system with only one possible state, there is no place for an external observer. That is, a God. This is something that clashes quite a bit with traditional physics and many theological and religious conceptions that suggest that there is someone or something that is observing the system with all its changes. Although for researchers, these implications are an exercise for the reader. They just give their own conclusion. The meaning. As reported by media such as IFLScience and Knewzthis comment is a humorous but profound “wink”. It is not that the article attempts to prove or disprove the existence of a deity, but rather it points out a structural paradox. What they point out is that if the universe contains everything and its state is unique, you cannot be “outside” it. Something that quite clashes with the classic theistic idea of ​​a God who exists separately from his creation, but who observes it from the outside. The problem is that for these scientists there is no outside. Your opinions. The physicist and popularizer Brian Cox qualified the document and its bold footnote as “exhilarating”, highlighting how a purely mathematical question about Hilbert spaces ends up bordering on questions that used to be the exclusive domain of metaphysics. The paradox. The article in this case raises a fascinating dichotomy that some philosophers of physics are already analyzing. What they propose is that if the “eye of God” sees the universe, they will only see a static point without any type of change. But from within we see a rich, chaotic and complex universe as we experience all its properties. The authors solve this mathematically using quantum code theory and holography, suggesting that complexity is an illusion of internal perspective. But the theological joke remains: if God is the fundamental reality, then reality is incredibly simple. It is we who complicate it by observing it from within. Images | Davide Cantelli In Xataka | The Hand of God trying to reach a galaxy: an impressive image in which not everything is what it seems

This frog is one of the most colorful creatures in the world. Photographic tourism is costing it its existence

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The frog you see above is one of the most striking amphibians that exist, so how can you not stop to take a photo of it if you find it in your path? Well, in practice it is difficult for you to come across one if you live in Madrid, London or New York because this frog that looks like it’s from another galaxy is native from a very specific place in India: the evergreen forests of the Western Ghats mountain range, at an altitude of between 900 to 1,200 meters. So if the mountain does not go to Muhammad, Muhammad goes to the mountain: just as there are those who leave to Mexico to swim with wild orcasthere are people who prepare a getaway on their own to immortalize the galaxy frog, which is its name. These unregulated photographic excursions are already taking their toll: an entire group of specimens has disappeared from the rainforest. As you can deduce from the photograph of the galaxy frog, it gets its name from its cosmic appearance, with a black background and little black spots that look like stars. It is not an appearance that goes unnoticed, but between the fact that it is similar in size to the tip of a finger and that they hide in small spaces such as cracks under rocks, fallen leaves and decaying trees, It is not easy to see them with the naked eye.. Going to photograph an endangered species is not the best thing for the species. Handle it carelessly, either And it is not easy to see them simply because they are disappearing from the face of the Earth: galaxy frogs have a conservation status classified as “threatened” that is getting worse, according to this study published in Herpetology Notes.In the paper They point directly to one of the main culprits: uncontrolled photographic outings, insofar as they cause alterations and changes in behavior that have an impact on the feeding and reproduction of the frogs. The study’s research team, led by Rajkumar K. P, a scientist at the Zoological Society of London, has been monitoring that area of ​​​​the jungle since 2019, which has allowed them to follow the population of the Melanobatrachus indicus (its scientific name) over time. Back in 2020 they discovered a group of seven galaxy frogs hidden under some logs. Via: Drjpmenon When they returned to the area after COVID-19, they found that this group had disappeared. So, all the alarms went off: What had happened to that group of frogs? Well, two summers where different groups of photographers came en masse, trampling the area and moving the logs looking for: 1. the frogs. 2. get the perfect composition to take the ideal photo. As the investigation states: “The photographers knew the microhabitat of the species through publications and local trackers and moved numerous logs while searching for the frogs.” The researchers are aware of groups of up to six photographers who came to the place eager to photograph the frogs. And not only that, they often moved the specimens to place them on moss or logs, so that they could take a photo with a more attractive background. For frogs, it not only involves the presence of man or undergoing changes in their location and that of the elements where they hide and find food, but also enduring repeated manipulations and powerful camera flashes to illuminate the scene for hours. Touching such a sensitive wild animal without biosafety protocols is not a good idea: stress, heat, potential illnesses… are some of the conditions they suffered, such as pick up the paper. One of the trackers assured the researchers that two small frogs perished during the sessions, although the scientists could not verify this. The investigation concludes with a series of good practicesa measure that researchers say should be established in the form of ethical standards for nature and conservation photography. This is not a study against natural photography, since as Rajkumar explains, done correctly it can be the best ally: “It’s a huge resource to help conservationists better understand things like animal distribution and behavior, and the resulting images can educate others about these incredible species. (…) However, irresponsible photography can turn that resource into a danger.” Rajkumar takes this sad episode as an example as “a strong warning about the consequences of unregulated photography” but that without careful and responsible management “we run the risk of disappear from the planet forever“. In Xataka | In its fight against mass tourism, Italy has entered uncharted territory: a tax on tourist dogs In Xataka | Ultra-rich tourism has found an oasis in Kenya. A Safari at $3,500 a night that blocks animal migration Cover | Davidvraju

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